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From the politesse of ‘En Echelon’ or ‘Answering Injunction’, through the tense constructivist representations of ‘Destructive Impulse’, to the defensive operations of ‘Lines Inscribed on a Gauntlet’, Green Light reveals the powers and limits of resistant speech. In these poems, ironic formality as form of defence, echoed by the formalism of narrative or of mise-en-page, is softened by a context which dwells consistently on the construction of personal and semantic relations through contrasting tonal registers which both alienate and familiarize… Maybe the description at the end of ‘Destructive Impulse’, ‘The before / speech a form of moment / gone hard, now expelled / aphoristic because / no other container sufficed’, could serve as a guide to this book as a whole: the hardening/narrowing of the arterial connections between speeches, silence, and their social or temporal contexts means that the text is emitted in aphoristic fragments, and can’t be contained by the procedural rationality of forensic discourse.

£4.00, ISBN 978-1-903488-57-7, 2006

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Author Biography

Ian Hunt writes widely on contemporary art, often in the pages of Art Monthly, and is currently a lecturer in fine art at University College for the Creative Arts, Canterbury. As an editor his work includes two volumes of art criticism by Stuart Morgan, What the Butler Saw (Durian, 1996) andInclinations (forthcoming from frieze in 2006). As curator he has worked with Pamela Golden on her retrospective exhibition at the Centro de Arte Moderna, Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, in 2004, and, with Fred Mann, on the exhibition Nightwood (named for Djuna Barnes) at Rhodes + Mann, London in 2002, which included works by the Portuguese poet and artist Ana Hatherly.

He was born in Rochester in 1962, studied foundation for a year at Canterbury College of Art and did a degree in English at Cambridge in the mid-1980s, since when he has lived and worked in London. From 1994 to 2002 he published the poetry imprint Alfred David Editions, including books by Drew Milne, Brian Catling and Stephen Rodefer. His writing includes a story, The Daubers, a monologue on aspects of transmission and possession. Poems have been sporadic, but begin with 'En Echelon', which announces an interest that continues in poetry's relationship with drama.

Regularities in what's called motion are revealed by persons willing to play rock-in-stream.

¤

As a voice looks down the bright pulsed light tunnelled and kinked under oceans, antiphon delay I tried to not walk between the wandering child and its mother, eyes upraised too late till pavement space star map disarrayed there being still lights in such a firmament.

¤

Consort wildly as so much agrees or is agreed by a gentler conqueror than you, soft empire where enquiry meets shocks any would invade answerer's bubble. Indifference of air's mosaic, Terrazzo levels altering subtly echoic stutters. We note historic arrivals of accessories for removal, to lull the deed, or watch for what was learnt: new joiners had other ideas closed on accidents of birth. 'Or did you not ever for the first time go on an escalator, ever.' And agree that it is fine: seeing names pre-printed, what can you do but look about &, occasionally, sign.

¤

They found the DJ busy on sorrow and in the refusal found the new sound they know,

so fast it gave access to exhausted not quite slowness nonetheless accurate

to the slight yet very frequent shocks of the modern world. 'Pleasure

is a political achievement' repeated at ten dozen b.p.m. it may be so still yet

unconfidently outside in the fear commas.

¤

Around the edge and bolted down, the pavilions. But neglect the gods.

Rents in the broadcloth through which the vignette becomes, blinking from the passage,

ready for many entrances into singular history civilian hairdressers become. The gods 'are very near,

but cannot hear us', the space above their level occupied by glorious machinery of air. Secular completeness unobserved in last century's roofwork.

Even the hurriers benefit from its built dispensation and open transitions. (Audible thunder in external hemisphere.)

These signs surplus to surly got down verbatim. As a returnee from illness marvels at simple motion.

¤

With a felt pen I'll letter unfamiliar letters separately on a placard, the car lulled safely to the space it takes. I have wiped the previous careful letter forms nicely. This reminds me of the magic slate with which Ernesto firmly taught the importance of writing. When the moment comes I never make a mistake, assure the eyes alighting on the powderkeg of names that I'm no ferryman, just a cheerfully pale copy. Rebuilt fairyland, it works at least, I prefer it. But by some trick it's me alone represented with a family, where I might want to be a cloud in trousers or narrate imperium's grand-equivocal finale or show them all the three cups trick again, that it is never truly learnt: in this I side with the child playing with its shadow, reverb of a saucepan lid in anyone's noise orchestra - I read 'the children will stand and scream inarticulately at each other for an hour together, out of pure love to dissonance'. I'll defer concatenation. Except: do not make too much of the past. Sometimes there's no way back to roman from italic, we must just all lean & slope onwards

Piped music makes of air a watery pact. Emerging onto a concourse you find the audience waits,

all eyes upraised to the display: Every destination speaks MasterCard Truncation lightly borne Anyone can play ambassador of an island state So why this new, new pressure Abbreviation enters, revise Imaginarium of mixing, its faults Quaint old municipal breedingLife as it is; life caught unawares

Music for swimmers Aquarium of removal accepted Proceed to way through now